Archive for December, 2014

The movie was very entertaining, extremely well done, so well done that the audience that attended the 4:05 showing at the Ritz 13 Saturday actually applauded when it was over. That almost never happens at a movie. None of the people who made the movie were there to hear it. I was glad I saw it. It deserves applause.

What I was not glad about was going to see it on the first Saturday it showed because the theater was packed. That wouldn’t have been so bad except there was lots of juicy coughing, with one person emitting a deep bronchial cough numerous times. I hope my immune system is performing well. I’m going back to seeing matinée movies during the week when most people are at work. That’s one of the advantages of being retired.

Bobby Cremins, the most successful Georgia Tech basketball coach ever – the school named its basketball court after him – talked as much about football as basketball when he spoke to members of the Rotary Club of Columbus. That’s because the paying-players controversy affects basketball and all college sports. If you pay football players, you have to pay all team sport athletes. Not everyone agrees. Some say you pay the players that bring in the big bucks. That’s the way capitalism works. People, they assert, who say you have to pay all of them are just using that as an excuse to keep from paying any.

Cremins agrees the players should get more of the “ridiculous” amount of money the TV networks are paying to broadcast the games. When they see the schools and coaches getting millions of dollars, while they play the games and take the physical risks and get only a scholarship for and room and board, they feel cheated. He says they have a case, but he is opposed to paying them. Instead, he is for giving them a stipend. So paying them a $5,000-a-month stipend, the figure being considered by the NCAA, is not paying them. Uh huh.

While college football is riding high now, the future is not so rosy. A recent poll shows that 50 percent of American parents don’t want their sons to play football. All the news about the brain injuries caused by concussions and about kids dying from injuries is taking its toll. Also, the news about brutal and criminal off-the-field behavior by some players has its effects. College players are produced by high school football.

As for me, I enjoy a good game, especially if Georgia Tech, Georgia, Alabama, or Auburn are playing. Still, as I have said before, if I had a young son, I would not want him playing football. The physical risks are just too great. It’s just not worth it.

You really have to hand it to someone who has probably one of the most demanding jobs in the Columbus area who earned a Doctor of Education degree while doing that job.

I didn’t really care all that much that Dr. David Lewis didn’t have a doctorate when he took the job, but some did and made a big fuss over it. His answer was that, while didn’t have one, he was getting one, and he did, and now he has it.

Of course, that won’t stop critics. They’ll come up with something.

Frankly, I’ve liked Dr. Lewis from the first time I met him when he first came to Columbus. One of the first things he did was visit every school in the district. Also, he knows the value of the arts. He was a music educator before getting into school administration. I sensed that he is the type who gets things done. And that is very hard to do when working with a politicized elected school board and a legislature and governor who drastically cut the public education budget. They did restore some of those cuts when facing reelection, but nowhere near what they cut. Now that they don’t have to worry about an election, let’s see what they do.

You don’t have to go to Atlanta or New York for first-rate entertainment. It’s right here in good old Columbus, GA, and it costs less, a lot less. In fact, a lot of it is absolutely free. Also, you don’t have to fight gridlocked traffic.

Ed and Sidney Wilson, Jean McKee, Julie Bray, and me at Social.

Take Saturday night, for instance. We had a really outstanding dinner at Social. Of course, the good company played a large role in the enjoyable Social experience. There were a lot of young people there, so they probably didn’t know that the building at 11th and Broadway was Lee’s Discount Drugs dating back to the 1940s. I enjoy it much more as a restaurant and bar.

Bill Heard Theater is all decked out for the holidays.

After dinner we headed over to Bill Heard Theater at the River Center to see Cirque Dreams Holiday. It was sensational nonstop Christmas holiday fun as the performers did what seemed physically impossible to do in an artistic way. The set and costumes were dazzling. The dancing comedian, who engaged audience members in his act, had the audience howling. It was really great fun.

There are a lot more good live shows coming to the River Center and the Springer in the coming months, and there is live music for every taste with a great symphony orchestra, a college school of music second to none that features weekly, sometimes nightly, concerts with most of them free to the public, and there is the Columbus Community Orchestra and the fine Fort Benning Manuever Center of Excellence Band. Both of then have free Christmas concerts this month.

So, don’t sit around a mope when you can get out of the house and enjoy it all Tis, indeed to season to be jolly.